Highest-ranking social website by 2011: Twitter this
Not only is Paddy Power (founded in 1988) showing its 21st-century hipness with its proposition bet inviting punters to wager on “Highest-ranking social website by 2011,” the bookmaker may have actually given punters an easy one at generous odds.
The odds on the Paddy’s “Highest-ranking social website by 2011” currently looks as follows.
Facebook: 10/11
Twitter: 9/4
Windows Live: 4/1
MySpace: 5/1
Bebo: 50/1
So let’s get right down to business and realize this is a two-‘site race. Sure, according to web analytics company Compete.com, MySpace is currently ranked #2 on social networking websites with a huge lead on Twitter as of January, but look at that chart again: MySpace is down from the top spot while having its popularity lunch eaten by Facebook, with which everyone apparently registered (plus created a few event pages while at it) last year.
Paddy Power will be using web traffic metric watchdog Alexa.com to determine the winner on January 1, 2011, and that ‘page right now has Facebook at overall no. 5 most visited; it’s in the top five in 30 countries ranging from Bangledesh to Venezuela – and all this since just March 2007. Year-on-year from February 2008 to ’09, unique visitors increased from over 20 million to 65.7 million, a 228% rate.
But then there’s Twitter. Seriously, where was this stuff a year ago? The internet’s own instant messaging service ballooned from the relative obscurity of 475,000 unique visitors in 2008 to a whopping seven-plus million a year later, a ridiculous 1,382% increase in popularity.
So this one’s going to come down to today’s top dog versus the wave of tomorrow: MySpace versus Twitter in a fight to the finish. Who will win?
Easy. Twitter.
Why? Because of something called “Facebook Open Stream API,” released by the No. 1 social networkers last Monday.
Certain to make Facebook heroes in the minds of cyberspace-freedom advocates and programmers, Open Stream API involves free access to Facebook software code, thereby allowing clever voodoo magicians – I mean, program designers – to do all that fun stuff messing around with profiles, posts, pictures and messages from friends without actually visiting Facebook.com.
Such a move could well keep Facebook’s household-name status fresh into 2011, but Twitter’s just been handed a hell of a boost in closing a 1.1-million visitor gap. Combined with the simplicity of Twitter and its incredible insinuation into normal life, a 9/4 bet looks pretty damn good right about now. Need further proof? Here’s the closer on a Business Week report on Twitter’s exploding growth:
Only hours after Facebook announced the Open Stream API, four Twitter developers told me they were already thinking about how they can use the Facebook code, including the makers of Tipjoy, Twittervision, Twitterhawk.com, and Bit.ly.
The Os Man’s advice: Don’t bet the farm, but throw a few dollars’ worth of the gambling allowance at old Twitter. And then tweet it. No harm in helping your chances a little, right?
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